OV goes straight to contingency budget

SOUTH OTSELIC – Last Tuesday, residents of the Otselic Valley School District voted down the school’s proposed budget for 2007/2008 with 137 votes for the budget and 170 against it. At last night’s special meeting, the school board voted to move directly to the contingency budget, instead of attempting to come up with another budget proposal for voter approval.

Superintendent Larry Thomas showed the board members the results on an exit poll conducted after voters cast their ballots on Tuesday. A total of 370 people voted, and of those, 102 participated in the exit poll.

“It’s not all one-sided,” said board member Dave Cruikshank while examining the exit poll results. “There are people who think we should have cut more, people who think we should have cut less and people who think we did a great job.”

Board President Greg Brown agreed. “We’re in a position where I don’t think we can change the budget enough to make one side happy enough to get it passed,” said Brown.

Originally, Otselic Valley’s proposed budget, totaling $8,178,842 would have meant a 4.59 percent budget increase from the previous year and a 5.77 percent tax levy increase. Board member Dan Brown asked Business Administrator Nancy Henner to explain what the contingency budget would look like.

Henner explained that because the proposed budget was already inside the contingency budget, there would be limited changes for the district. The contingency budget would prevent the school from buying equipment that was not needed for health or safety reasons, meaning the lawn tractor that was written into the initial budget will not be purchased, but the cost of the tractor will still be in the budget for emergency situations. Public use of school facilities would also be altered, with non-school related organizations having to pay for use of the facilities.